Creative Teaching & Learning

Issue 4.4

Professor Reuven Feuerstein and Professor Bob Burden, who were both very instrumental in establishing this journal and had a huge impact on children’s education and welfare across the world, have sadly died in the past weeks.

Many people have certain preconceptions about project-based learning which means this innovative teaching strategy is often misapplied or avoided altogether. Here, Bob Lenz provides counterarguments to the most pervasive.

Setting up your first project-based learning unit can be an intimidating task – but for Alyson Boustead, all that preparation and planning paid off. Here, she details her school’s ambitious venture into PBL, and the astounding impact it had on her learners’ creativity, resourcefulness and resilience.

It’s been criticised as narrow, rigid and unimaginative, but the new primary curriculum is coming into force from September this year whether we like it or not. Here, Ros Wilson considers the ways teachers can encourage creativity, even under its restrictive impositions.

Mary Mason thought her innovative language project was dead. Here, she describes her amazement and delight when, after publishing the details of the course in this journal, one secondary school decided to test it out on their students – with excellent results.

How can we encourage our students to persevere, even when learning becomes challenging? Matthew Farber looks to the gaming industry, with an exploration of how game-based reward structures such as badges, leaderboards and Easter eggs can boost motivation and engage students in mastering vital ‘real-world’ skills.

It was supposed to be the war to end all wars, but have we learnt its lessons? Jane Jones commemorates the centenary of the First World War with an in-depth investigation into life and death on the front line during the bloodiest human conflict the world had ever known.

The Great War: Activity 1. The purpose of this activity is to encourage active thinking and reading through close examination of the text, ‘The Angel of Mons’, using the reciprocal reading roles: summariser, predictor, clarifier, questioner.

The Great War: Activity 2. Students identify events leading to the Great War, determining which causes were the most/least important, before examining one country's motives for joining the war in more detail.

The Great War: Activity 6. Students use a range of resources to write diary entries and letters home from the trenches. The second section of this activity has students solving a number of mathematical problems relating to the trenches.

The Great War: Activity 7a. Students read and discuss the poem 'Dulce et Decorum est' by WW1 soldier, Wilfred Owen. From there, they either recreate the poem in drama, or write their own poem about a gas attack.

The Great War: Activity 7b. Students conduct a P4C enquiry into the use of poisonous gases during WW1. The starting point for this enquiry is the Hague Convention of 1899 which outlawed the use of chemical weapons.

The Great War: Activity 9. Students research the link between 11 names, writing up a brief report of the events surrounding each person’s demise. The activity culminates with students drawing and justifying their conclusions as to the justness of each person’s fate.